


oh no, they're hot

by TheThirteenthHour



Series: #squadgoals — a collection of drabbles [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Crushes, Drabble, F/M, Humor, James is actually a disaster, M/M, Multi, Pining, tfw you realize you're in love with your best friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 13:16:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16368308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThirteenthHour/pseuds/TheThirteenthHour
Summary: Randomly realizing over dinner one night that he has feelings for his best friends isn't exactly how James wanted his evening to go.





	oh no, they're hot

**Author's Note:**

> There will probably be sequel drabbles to this down the road, but for now, have Disaster James.

They’re in the mess hall the day James realizes he wants them in his life forever.

He doesn’t know what does it. It’s not like any of them look at him or address him a certain way. It’s not like any of them are even directly talking to him when it happens, it just… happens. Over a joke Ryan makes that leaves even Ina curled over the table and forces Nadia to take her glasses off so she can wipe her eyes.

Is it their laughter? The way the light catches their smiles? How well they all get along? How they trust and support each other? Something—maybe none of those things, maybe one of them, maybe all of them, maybe more—makes him pause mid-laugh, flagging him like an aircraft marshall as if to say, Look! Look at how beautiful and intelligent and capable and reliable and absolutely perfect these people are! Don’t you want to keep them close, to hold and kiss and love?

His response: Oh _fuck_.

He stops laughing. He coughs to try to cover it. Maybe he can pass it off as having laughed so hard he choked on mushy peas and tasteless rice.

He doesn’t. When Nadia finally catches her breath, she chides, “Oh come on, James, have a sense of humor.”

He can’t look at her. He does anyway, because he has to. Now all of a sudden, he needs to see them and study them and take in everything about them. But it’s a glance that bares his soul, and he runs back to the safety of his dinner in a split second. “It was funny,” he says. Unconvincingly. Very much so.

She goes back to Ryan, asking for details or adding to his story, he's not really sure, while he stares very, very intently at his tray of food. He can’t look at them. He’ll want to stare if he does. He probably can’t even say anything because he’ll sound like something’s wrong. Oh, and he probably looks like he’s sitting there trying to count the grains of rice he hasn’t eaten so maybe actually putting food in his mouth and chewing would be a good idea.

If any of them notices something strange about him, they’re nice enough not to point it out. He tries to act normal, to his credit. He listens. He glances at them—carefully. Smiles when the conversation calls for it. Gets in a word or two every now and then. Normal. Perfectly, perfectly normal. None of them ask him about what’s on his mind and he is grateful to every deity in the cosmos for it.

He suffers through the rest of dinner, but he survives, and he can stay focused enough during their evening study period just out of sheer habit, so he’s good there too. He can even avoid Ryan despite being roommates, claiming exhaustion so he can get ready for bed and bury his face in his pillow so that maybe, _maybe_ , he doesn’t have to think about his best friends and holding their hands and cuddling with them and kissing them and—

“Oh my god,” he whispers into his pillow.

Ryan sleeps in the bunk below him.

Ryan sleeps in the same room as him.

There really wouldn’t be anything stopping them if they—

He takes a deep, loud breath and thinks very, _very_ hard about physics and calculus and aerodynamics and anything, _anything_ other than the person maybe three feet below him, no matter how weirdly nice it might be to think about joining him in his bed and hey, derivatives are just! Fun! Aren’t they? It’s great, finding the limit as x approaches infinity! Very fun! Yes! So interesting! He’s definitely not sleeping tonight!

(He does sleep. It just takes three hours to get there.)

The morning, admittedly, unfortunately, isn’t that much better. He does get that moment of reprieve, though. Those sweet, hazy seconds between sleep and wake, where nothing exists except for the reemergence of consciousness. Sweet, blissful ignorance of the knowledge he came into just hours ago.

But his mind registers the alarm, and it registers Ryan getting out of bed. And he remembers.

His first thought is, Why. A flat Why. With a capital W and a period at the end. He doesn’t have time for this. He doesn’t have the energy to sort through feelings. Not after maybe five hours of sleep, and certainly not after the mess he was yesterday.

But if that weren’t enough, he—because he’s so bright and intelligent—scoots over to the edge of his bunk, and it must be so he can look at Ryan. There’s literally no other reason for him to peek down through the bars that frame his mattress.

It is, perhaps, the biggest mistake he’s made in the past, oh, his entire life. Which is stupid, because it’s not like he’s never seen Ryan stretch in the morning. It’s not like this is the first time he’s witnessed that sliver of skin peek out as his shirt rides up but it sure as hell is the first time he’s _noticed_ it.

He squeezes his eyes shut, lies on his back, and runs through the drag equation half a dozen times in his head.

“James.”

He frowns. He likes the sound of Ryan saying his name. It’s deep and smooth and, ugh. “I’ll be down…”

Thankfully, Ryan grabs his things and heads to the showers without him. He really does not need to see Ryan with a towel around his waist or risk catching a glimpse of his bare ass and more, now that he’s thinking everything he’s trying not to think.

He pauses when his feet touch the floor and stares through Ryan’s made bed.

This is going to be his life from here until they graduate.

Okay.

Yeah.

Alright.

He sighs and resigns himself to his fate.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked it, please consider letting me know with a kudos, a comment, or a [like/reblog on tumblr](https://write-nonsense-by-the-ream.tumblr.com/post/179289677143/james-suffers-through-the-rest-of-dinner-but-he)! Feedback is always appreciated ❤


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